


always the time between us

by gods_among_us (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Angst, Childhood Trauma, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 01:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9524663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/gods_among_us
Summary: You think he’s everything a person ought to be: intelligent, funny, pretty, kind. He is frail and he is small and, in some lightings, he looks almost gray, but you are in love with him all the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caryophyllaceae (xphantomhive)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xphantomhive/gifts).



> in repayment for the beautiful fic my new bff wrote me (;:::

Your name is Dave Strider and you are in love with the boy who scratches at his arms far too much. 

He is frail and he is small and, in some lightings, he looks almost gray, but you are in love with him all the same. You think he’s everything a person ought to be: intelligent, funny, pretty, kind. He listens to you and doesn’t feel the need to make you repay favors (even though you do) and he’s more charitable than you could ever be. 

(there’s a long list of things that make him uncomfortable, of things you must not do or say or think because it will make him upset and he’ll get that dull shake in his voice and that tremble to his lip and you hate it.) 

You’re at his shop, his cousin’s brewery off main, every single day because he works there every single day and you need him more than the cigarettes he tells you to smoke outside, face hidden in his elbow.

(you add smoke to the list of things that make him uncomfortable. you add it and you must remember.) 

He asks why you aren’t at school, why you’re always getting drinks too early. You tell him you dropped out of school. He stares at you, aghast, and then he asks why. You tell him it’s because you weren’t ever any good, didn’t have any smarts. Wasn’t gonna help you anyways. He tells you that’s really, really stupid of you and everyone needs an education. You fall into silence. He must be wondering if he’s said too much, bitten nails tapping at the side of a half-clean glass. 

He tells you he didn’t get to finish his schooling years, and you don’t ask why. 

(you don’t talk about school after that. school is another touchy subject neither of you address.) 

He is a very soft-spoken person. You have a loud mouth. 

You talk in places he will not speak, he will shush you when it is meant to be silent.

You work in harmony. Beautiful, perfect harmony. And you love him for it.

You don’t tell him this. You can’t tell him this. You aren’t meant to tell him this.

(you want to. you want him to know more than anything in the world and you are victim to your own fear of how you’ll be seen because of it.) 

He doesn’t tell you a lot of things. He doesn’t have a lot of family or friends. 

You faintly recall him calling you his only friend. You had sipped your drink and silently, unspokenly, returned the sentiment. He knew already. 

You tell him you lost one of your best friends recently, to that new law and those new state-of-the-art facilities. You tell him the other one got hitched already, got his girlfriend pregnant just last year. You don’t see him much anymore. 

You don’t ask about what happened to his friends. You don’t want to know. He doesn’t want you to know. 

(that is a touchy subject. his relationships. you think he may have had a girlfriend but, selfishly, you find yourself wishing he did not.) 

There are not a lot of people who fancy a drink early on Thursday mornings.

There are not a lot of bars that are open on Thursday mornings. 

There are little ways you can excuse your time with him. You can hide behind alcoholism or dysfunctional traits, but he knows as well you know that the only reason you’re there is because he’s there and you know as well as he knows the only reason he opens so early is because you’re never late on those slow, dreary mornings. The morning drags into the afternoon and the afternoon drags into the evening and then the evening will drag into the dawn of a new day. And the day that follows is just as dreary as the one previous. 

You feel like time has slowed around you, and not necessarily in a very kind way. Not in a glorified, idolized eternal youth kind of way. It has stopped you in quite possibly the lowest you’ve ever hit in your short life. Your family is an ocean away, a wall away, a million miles away. They are untouchable. His family is even further unreachable. You two are stuck in a lulling daze of nothing but each other’s presence. 

(you don’t know what you’re living for anymore. part of tells yourself you’ve living for the family that is trapped far away, the family you doubt you’ll ever see again. part of you tells yourself you’re living for your friends, though they are lost to you, as well. you tell yourself you are living for the boy with the kinda pretty, kinda nervous smile and you have to believe that because he’s the only thing in your life that makes you feel like seconds tick forward anymore.) 

He can speak the language you were taught to hate as a child. 

You can speak the language he was taught to fear as a child.

You both speak English, too, and English is a neutral language. Yours is much, much rockier than his. You do everything in your power to not look like a dumbass in front of him, but it is hard. You trip over your words and you can’t blame it on your lack of education because you can’t bring up school and you refuse to resort back to the other language because you don’t want him to be threatened by you. Because he is all you have and it would kill you if he was threatened by you. 

He tells you, in soothing tones, in soft tones, in almost-loving tones that he does not care if you cannot remember the translation for whatever word was trapped on your tongue. He does not mind. He is patient with you, more patient than he should be with you, and when you calm down enough to explain yourself, to explain what you mean, he will listen and then give you the correct term. 

(sometimes, when you have one of these moments, he will take your hand. his are cold. yours are much too warm. his are small in yours. they fit together like puzzle pieces.) 

He is the one word you cannot remember but you do remember sound pretty. 

He is that. 

To you, he is everything you have ever wanted and then some. You don’t know how you’ve managed this far without him to encourage you, without him to tell you where your start and where you end. You feel like wherever you drop out, he picks up. Wherever he stops, you continue. You have never wanted to fit into a box so perfectly before. 

He is an epiphany. 

(you do not know if that word makes sense in context but that is what he is to you.) 

You wonder how she would have worded this, late at night, cold in a bed that is not rightfully yours. You wonder if she would’ve called this puppy love. Childish and fickle. And the other half ponders if she would’ve seen something profound in sidelong glances and purposeful brushing of hands. You wish you could ask her. You’ve always needed her to connect the dots of your emotions.

But she is gone now, and you are stuck without her guidance, and you fretfully remember all of the times she would say to you that she wouldn’t be around forever. 

Ironic, she never meant that. She thought she would be around forever. You thought she would be around forever. 

You wish your brother had seen how bright her future was and how it dulled yours in comparison. You wish that she was with you and not being punished for doing nothing, nothing at all. 

The body besides yours shifts. You pull your arm out from around it. 

(you wish you could say you were sick of being a rebound, sick of being a placeholder, but you will take any comfort you can get now.) 

You stay later at the bar than everyone else on Friday night. He is busy cleaning glasses and he doesn’t spend a lot of time talking to you. This suits you just fine. You can wait. You are not impatient. 

(you are very impatient.) 

You don’t care that there’s a girl with blonde hair spilling down her back that seems mighty keen on getting him to leave his work post. 

(you care very much.) 

You aren’t worried that he will take her up on the offer and leave you sitting alone. 

(you are terrified of the prospect.)

But he turns her down. And she moves on to the next boy in the bar. You hate the little, whistling sigh of relief that you give when he does. And you hate the way it makes him jump and give you a sheepish look from across the bar. 

(no whistling.) 

He eventually comes over to chat with you once the bar is emptying up. 

You ask him why he didn’t go with that girl. 

(she is gone now, with someone else in tow.) 

He shrugs. He said that she reminded him too much of someone else and that he didn’t want to open that can of worms. Not now, he had paused for a heaving sigh, not ever. You nod in understanding even though you have little clue what he means.

You ask him if he gets offers like that a lot. He almost laughs in your face. He tells you he’s hardly the most desirable count in the kingdom, that most of the time, people see him as a sorry sack of bones and skin. You blink at him. You cannot see that at all. He looks gorgeous to you.

You can’t (don’t want to) tell him this. 

You just say that they’re (so fucking) wrong.

He smiles a little at you, a sliver of a grin between thin lips he spends too much time biting at. He tells you not to flatter him. You say you would do nothing of the sort and he rolls his eyes. 

After a moment, he fires back with the same question, do you get a lot of offers like that. You shake your head, say nope, force down a drink. The looks he gives you is almost disbelieving. He tells you that, why, back in his village, you would’ve been sought after tenfold.

Hell, he says, that plenty of men your age had even gotten married back when he lived in a nameless town in a nameless country and he was neighbors with that nameless man who had that nameless wife and you should have seen her, she was a real catch. 

You tell him you’re a lot to handle. 

(you don’t tell him about your lack of money, the cash you’re blowing on drinks that you sip too slowly so you can sit in his presence for longer. you don’t tell him about your pitiful job standings or that the reason you’re alive and well in the greatest country in the world is because your brother saw to it. you don’t tell him how your family name might as well be ending with you. you don’t tell him about the selfishness or the laziness or the arrogance or the illness you have.) 

You just snort and tell him you’re a lot to handle. 

(more than he could know.) 

And he smiles, shakily, and agrees. 

(more than he wants to know.)

He is the only rock in your life. You feel like a pebble compared to him, a grain of sand being ground against him. It hurts to be near him. It hurts to feel his hurt and it hurts to try and comfort him and it hurts to sense his sorrow and it hurts to know that no matter what you do, he will never see you as anything more than one of them. 

Your name is Dave Strider and you’re in love with the boy who scratches too much at his arms, scratches too much at your heart, your head, your everything.

And, past all the kindness, you know that he is afraid of you for things you cannot change. 


End file.
